But the ballast was bars of iron rescued from the sea, and there was nothing that would serve.
Then of a sudden he whipped out his knife, and with the point of it jerkily traced on the thwart where I sat, the word "FATHER," and pointed his knife at me.
"Yes," I nodded.

"It is my father come back, when we all thought him dead.
He comes in disgrace, and his life would be forfeited if they found him, so you and I are going to hide him for a time--till he is himself, and can go away again." Krok nodded, and he was probably thinking of my mother, for his fist clenched and he shook it bitterly at the unconscious man.
Then he knelt again, and looked at his wound, and shook his head.
"It was I shot him, not knowing who he was.

And so I must save his life, or have his blood on my hands." From Krok's grim face I judged that the latter would have been most to his mind.
"I thought of trying the Ecrehous.

We could build a shelter with some of the old stones, and he will be safer there than in Jersey.

But I must get a doctor to him, or he'll slip through our hands." Krok pondered all this, and then, pointing ahead to the bristle of rocks in front and to himself, and then to me and the wounded man and to Jersey, I understood that he would land on the Ecrehous and build the shelter, while I took the wounded man on to Jersey to find a doctor.